Venice Film Festival 2011: Dispatch One1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA few weeks ago in Locarno, an acquaintance (I believe it was Filipino director Raya Martin) fittingly described this year’s Venice Film Festival line-up as “a monumental name-dropping.”
And boy, was he right. Here are a few names that dropped during the first four days of the festival (pardon, the “international exhibition of film art,” according to the literal translation from the Italian title): Polanski, Cronenberg, Garrel, Soderbergh, Solondz, Pacino, Haynes, McQueen . . . and Madonna.
Faced with such abundance, one has to make difficult choices. I resolved to commit to Orizzonti (Horizons), an experimental section that’s historically had surprises in store. This decision was made simpler by the organization’s strict, hierarchical entry system: after a few failed attempts to get into the major screenings, I figured it was time to venture into the unknown.
To start things off, I picked Amir Naderi’s Cut. Almost a manifesto for the section’s avant-garde spirit, the film is quite a strange creature. Though its story was originally written in Persian by the Iranian director, who has lived in the U.S. for the last 20 years, Cut was produced and set in Japan.
